Today, the country celebrates Children’s Day, to mark former PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday, who was also known as ‘Chacha Nehru’, due to his deep affection towards kids.
When it comes to Bollywood, Indian cinema has seen a dramatic shift in the landscape of children movies. In the early 40s, 50 and 60s, Mehmood made films which had a child as a protagonist, also starring in classics like Padosan and many more. In the 80s, we came up with a cult classic like Mr. India, starring Anil Kapoor in the lead role, along with Sridevi and a bunch of kids! As the story of a man, who inherits a watch that makes him invisible, the movie was fun, magical, and all things joyful! However, barring a few gems like Makdee (2002) , Stanley Ka Dabba (2011), Taare Zameen Par (2007), and few others, Bollywood hasn’t really been able to crack the code of a successful kids’ movie.
Shekhar Kapur, who directed the cult classic Mr. India, talks to us about why good kids’ movies are now drying up in the country. He says, “We make child-like films for children. That’s the problem. Typically, whenever we make films for children, we start making them child-like.” Talking about the movie, he further said, “If you want to make a theatrical film, you have to give it the scale that a theatrical film wants. One of the big things about Mr. India was that it had a huge scale. It has to have scale, okay? And Mr. India has proven that if you give a children film scale and substance, it can be evergreen, like Mr. India is.” He also added that he constantly “had a 12-year-old kid” sitting next to him, while he worked on the movie. Shekhar also recalls the classic Chhota Chetan (1998), which brought him immense joy, while he donned those 3D glasses.
He added, “In India, we make cartoons. Whereas, when you compare us to the West, the biggest hit of the year is a film called Inside Out 2. Inside Out 2 has made more than a billion dollars worldwide. It’s a kid’s film. It’s an anime. It’s not a cartoon, it’s an animation. And you look at the themes in it, it talks about anxiety, it talks about fear, it talks about life, it talks about death.”
According to Shekhar Kapur, when it comes to kids’ movies, we have got all our fundamentals wrong in the first place. He says, “We still treat our children like they are 5-year-olds. That’s the problem. That’s what children films are about. We make cartoons! Their (the kids’) YouTube is full of cartoons. Why would they even go to see a movie? You have to make a movie that has some substance that they want to go to the theater to see.”
Talking about how kids’ movies can’t be any lesser than any other commercial potboiler, Shekhar says, “If you want to attract people to theatres, you need to make a theatrical film. See, if you have a demand for a movie like Mr. India 2, anybody will invest in it. We just need the people who own the rights, and are willing to make it. I literally have had people coming to me and saying, ‘we’ll give you Rs. 150 crores, please make Mr. India 2’. The point is somebody must write a good script for kids.” Another key point to add here is that when it comes to kids movies, budget cannot be a constraint, and that a kid movie scale can’t be any lesser, compared to more ‘masala’ entertainers. Shekhar adds, ” I know quite a few friends who have made films for CFSI. (Children’s Film Society, India) But their budget is so slim. If you give them a shoestring budget to make a film, what will they make?”
Finally, he added, “We need to explain to the adults that your kids have grown up. They’re much more wiser than you are, and they should be served age-specific content.”
